PASADENA Calif. – Dr. Ralph D. Winter, his wife Roberta, and his secretary Prudence had only about $100 in cash when they placed a bid for the $15 million campus of Pasadena College in California in 1976.
The educational institution of the Church of the Nazarene, which had recently been renamed to Point Loma College, was trying to sell the campus after having purchased a new and larger campus in San Diego three years earlier, in 1973.
But already on the campus was a cult known as Church Universal and Triumphant (Summit Lighthouse), whose members revere a mixture of “ascended masters” including Buddha, Krishna, and Jesus.